Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @09:51AM
from the perhaps-it-could-skipped-across-the-pond dept.

New submitter lookatmyhorse writes "As promised, Google's Motorola unit has released its first Intel-powered smartphone. The Razr i is based on a mid-range model sold in the U.S. that features an ARM-based Snapdragon processor. Motorola said the change of chip meant improved camera performance. However, it has also meant Google's Chrome browser is not installed on the device. Intel recently cut its sales forecasts citing weaker demand. Although it dominates PC chip sales, it is a niche player in the smart device sector. The handset is Motorola's first to feature an Intel processor; its existing smartphone partners — ZTE, Lenovo, Lava, and Gigabyte — are all relatively minor smartphone forces in Western markets. So, Intel's tie-up with Google — which also makes the Android system — is widely seen as its most significant effort to crack the market to date. The handset will be offered in the UK, France, Germany and Latin America."

Apparently Chrome can be downloaded, which is a damn good thing because the default Android browser is pretty unimpressive(ie. the 'play' store won't flag it as incompatible with the device); but the Chrome built for Android apparently has some ARM-based optimizations or assumptions that make it less than it might be on x86, TFA isn't specific about what they are.

It's a trifle odd, though, given that Google certainly spends a fair amount of time polishing Chrome for x86 on Windows, OSX, Linux, and their own

Seems plausible. I don't doubt that there is something wrong with it, if they aren't shipping by default(since Chrome is superior to the Android default, and it isn't as though Google is going to try to block it for being 3rd party or anything), I'm just a bit surprised that Intel's efforts to push into phone territory didn't include an effort to get at least high-profile Android components working nice and smoothly on x86, which is something that they could have started working on well before the silicon m

Because Opera Mini is a glorified remote picture viewer, not a proper web browser. Sometimes it has its uses, such as on low bandwidth or expensive data rates, but the experience can be quite poor on JS heavy sites. A more appropriate suggestion would be Dolphin Mini which is a wrapper around Webkit but provides a nicer interface. Or if space is not an issue Firefox, Dolphin full or Opera.

According to TFA you can still install Chrome from the Play store (which is what most Android users do since Chrome is not installed by default on most Android devices). The one thing Chrome users with the Intel chip will lack is hardware accelerated page rendering.

I'm not sold on this chip, but I do like to see competition in the mobile CPU segment.

x86 linux binaries shouldn't be any big deal. It'll be interesting to see if anybody manages to get anything running remotely adequately under WINE, which is something that would have been wholly impractical on ARM; but might be possible on this thing. (If memory serves, these very-low-power atoms are deviant in some way that makes at least older Windows kernels freak out; but are x86 compatible from the perspective of programs that don't try anything seriously retro, like attempting to talk to the parallel

Yes, that seems to be the trend and I wonder why. It would be easy to put a killer battery in a phone by changing the form factor back to something like this [goo.gl] instead of making phones smaller and smaller. Surely there must be other people like me who don't mind a larger phone if it means significantly longer battery life?

My phone (a Samsung Vibrant, or Galaxy S1 if you will) charges from empty to full on 2 hours.

Doubling the charge time for double the capacity doesn't seem like a problem to me, since it usually charges overnight -- and it still leaves the option of a half charge in the same amount of time for the same amount of battery life I have now.

Of course, I sometimes carry one of these [amazon.com] around, but that's mainly because tethering is a huge battery drain. Oh, and that+the phone easily fit in one pocket, with the Nexus

If you don't mind a thicker iPhone there are external battery packs you can get that clip to the back.

Which is about 50% as efficient as a native battery would be, not mentioning it does cripple your ability to dock your phone, use a case or any other cool thing you do with the accessories designed for your phones.

Intel has previously released a 1.6Ghz chip that is at least somewhat similar(possibly worse, I don't know how much improvement there has been between that one and this 2Ghz model). It didn't feature in any phones of particular interest, a few mid-ish range ones on non-US carriers; but benchmarks suggested that it was pretty much even, in performance and battery life, to ARM phones in the dual 1.5Ghz processor range...

It does seem that the 'smartphone' category has been pegged at "Well, one working day of u

BBC says 20 hours between charges. They're competing against an iPhone 5 which is thinner and ten times longer battery life.

You say it's comparable performance to ARM dual core, but I don't see any evidence from you. This is not IBM, you don't get to sell people a 25 MIPS mainframe pretend it's superfast. They'll benchmark it. It's unlikely a single core CISC processor will be faster than a dual core RISK.

Here [engadget.com] is a review of one of the phones based on the 1.6Ghz atoms, with some benchmarks and battery life testing. A bit of googling around for that model will yield more of the same.

I'm not really interested in getting into a flamewar about a device category I don't even own an example of; but all the benchmarks I've read indicate that the 1.6Ghz single-core atom is basically equivalent to a dual 1.5Ghz ARM. Not bleeding edge(their GPU, especially, is an older part); but neither substantially slower nor subst

So, Intel's tie-up with Google â" which also makes the Android system â" is widely seen as its most significant effort to crack the market to date.

Uhhhh.. except Intel has also been announcing processors that they're saying (if you can believe it, which I don't) won't work with Android. IF you believe Intel, then this phone is a dead end and will have no market which provides binary-compatible software.

The release of this phone is analogous to an MPAA member releasing a movie. If anyone buys

After so many years of dealing with hardware deliberately designed to prevent software from competing with Windows, Linux fans are pretty touchy about this issue. If Intel wants to make the processor version of a Winmodem, they can. But they should expect that it will not be well received by some.

Android is an ARMv7 platform, just like Windows is x86, no matter how hard anyone tries to change it.

With x86 Android, all the CPU-intensive apps, WON'T RUN. They mention Chrome, but Firefox is also out. Non-trivial games won't run, as they're all native ARMv7. I know I make extensive use of emulators like MAME and others on my phone, but not if it's missing an ARMv7 CPU.

Multimedia apps are almost all out of the question, as they're ARMv7 for performance reasons. This includes Flash, so no luck if you wanted to use it. For multimedia, you're pretty much stuck with the piss-poor built-in audio and video players, since they've gone through the trouble of recompiling/porting them to x86.

My point is simple... No matter how fast the CPU may be, you aren't going to be able to run ANY apps that would benefit from a fast CPU, cause none of them will run, AT ALL. I think the potential for a non-ARM chip will have to come from the low-end instead... Maybe China's ridiculously cheap, low-end MIPS CPUs will make for cheap enough low-end tablets, that aren't fast enough for games and video anyhow, that developers slowly begin porting their apps, and opening the door for high-end MIPS devices as well.

Converting your application to another CPU architecture is called "porting" for a reason. We're talking about games, and audio and video codecs here. It's highly likely they've got some serious dependencies on ARMv7 that'll take far more than a recompile. If not, they'd have made it platform-independent to begin with.

Some architectures are easier to port between than other. ARM and x86 are actually not all that far, since both (in this case) are 32-bit. So vast majority of C/C++ code will just work after the recompile

The reason why they didn't make it "platform independent to begin with" is that, until recently, Android NDK only targeted ARM, and you could only upload ARM binaries to Play Store. For most, it really is just a recompile away.

Well, sure, except that when writing Android NDK apps, making them run on x86 is as simple as changing:

APP_ABI:= armeabi

...to:

APP_ABI:= armeabi x86

...in your Application.mk file. Then you end up with an APK which installs and runs fine on both. And if you want MIPS as well?

APP_ABI:= armeabi x86 mips

Of course, this won't help existing apps that haven't been cross-compiled, but the Intel San Diego we have here does seem to have a ARM emulator. But I haven't looked at that in much detail because TBH it doesn't interest me much.

With x86 Android, all the CPU-intensive apps, WON'T RUN. They mention Chrome, but Firefox is also out. Non-trivial games won't run, as they're all native ARMv7. I know I make extensive use of emulators like MAME and others on my phone, but not if it's missing an ARMv7 CPU.

Multimedia apps are almost all out of the question, as they're ARMv7 for performance reasons. This includes Flash, so no luck if you wanted to use it. For multimedia, you're pretty much stuck with the piss-poor built-in audio and video pla

The Atom Z2460 beats most phones in benchmarks, and plays in an even field regarding power usage.

Compared to most phones produced last year, yes. Compare it with HTCs One X or the Samsung Galaxy SIII (or the iPhone 5), and try again.Also, it beats few phones on GPU performance. That, and power consumption, is probably why Motorola slapped a crappy 540x960 screen in the phone.

Also, the Motorola Razr i has a 1780mah battery while the old Razr M had a 2000mah. Both are specified to run roughly 24h.